Talk about a party. The fourth episode of Starz party down Resuscitation stays at a Big Lebowski-inspired half hour that not only ranks among the best episodes in the history of the series, but also one of the funniest stoner comedies since the glory days of half baked And smiling face. “Lebowski was definitely on my mind,” the episode’s director — and party down Actor – Ken Marino confirms the comparison to the 1998 Coen Brothers favorite to Yahoo Entertainment. “That’s spot on.”
In KSGY-95 Prizewinner’s Luau, everyone’s favorite caterers are hired to provide drinks and hors d’oeuvres at a very special luau hosted by a local radio station that takes VIP guests to a Sting concert. Behind the scenes, Henry (Adam Scott) and his girlfriend Evie (Jennifer Garner) decide to throw their own party with some magic mushrooms, and the rest of the Party Down crew – minus Marino’s straight-forward boss Ron – join in the fun.
But as the mushrooms take hold, their respective psyches threaten to be split in two. Soon, chef Lucy (Zoë Chao) is preparing appetizers from pulp; rising influencer Sackson (Tyrel Jackson Williams) goes missing while livestreaming his very first trip; and Henry and Evie join the dude as they try to solve the mystery of where he went. Meanwhile, the group’s resident sci-fi-loving cynic Roman (Martin Starr) – whose paranoia streak is as big as his love for Philip K. Dick – discovers it’s the luau Strictly speaking a covert police operation designed to capture dead fathers who have skipped paying alimony.
Of course, there’s a lot going on in this episode, but Marino and the cast really tie the space together by playing up the drug humor…but they don’t to large. “The goal of doing something like this is just trying to be as real as possible,” explains the director. “Don’t get too witty about it; be as specific as you can.”
Scott echoes Marino when he talks about how he approached the role of a thoroughly stoned Henry. “It’s always a challenge when you have to play drunk or stoned because you don’t want it to be fake,” he said Parks and Recreation Fan favorite declared. “We’ve all seen the fake version of every type of high. I’ve always found the more specific the better, so I usually start there. And since we all did it, it was really fun just hold hands and jump off this cliff together.”
Accordingly party down Showrunner John Enbom changed the specifics of KSGY-95 Prizewinner’s Luau quite significantly during the production of Season 3, prominently starring Lizzy Caplan as Henry’s girlfriend Casey Klein – the one main character from the first two seasons who doesn’t return in the third. (Caplan wanted to be part of the revival but had production conflicts with other shows that forced her to retire. Garner was then recruited to have her rom-com return as Henry’s new love interest.)
“Once we realized it wasn’t a Lizzie episode anymore, we had to rethink what we were doing,” Enbom continues. “The idea we had was that they are in this beautiful place and it’s a boring job so they would try mushrooms. That’s what we started with and everything else we made up [later].”
Like every episode of party down — which always relied heavily on improvisation — the cast had a lot of leeway to decide how their characters would behave during their respective journeys. “I was given a surprising amount of freedom,” says Williams, who did not appear on the show’s previous seasons. “I was really looking forward to it because he has so much experience So intense and negative. Ken told me, ‘You can go as far as you want and if we need to call back, we’ll call back.’”
And a lot of Sackson outtakes ended up in the editing room mostly due to lack of time. “During the live stream audio where Sackson is babbles incoherently, there are numerous shots of Ken saying, ‘I’ll leave the mic on, just say whatever,'” recalls the actor. “It was so insanely stupid that some things came out of my mouth! But it was so much fun; I hope some of that will see the light of day.”
Chao – who also makes them party down Debuting this year – says Williams’ shroom-enhanced performance became the gold standard that the other cast members had to live up to. “We were spinning my stuff after he’s spinning his stuff, and Ken was like, ‘Guys must See Tyrel on ‘Shrooms,'” says the actress, laughing. “And I was like, ‘S***, Tyrel is knocking it out of the park! Now I have to do it too.’” Luckily, she was able to make up her own version of how Lucy’s journey would go.
“I was really stressed about coming on the show in Season 3 and I didn’t want to screw it up,” she explains. “And I was doubly afraid of this episode because you find out a new character and then you also find out what that character is like when he’s high. The thing that guided me throughout the season was my props, so I was like, ‘Here are the answers!’ It’s fun to see Lucy not in an angry, resentful place, but in this blissful, agitated creative space where she’s just going wild.”
Another scene that didn’t make it into the final cut is Roman’s reaction to discovering that his car was stolen by one of the dead fathers. Needless to say, he’s not that lucky. “When we were shooting it, I was like, ‘My car is right here,’ and then I pretended to get in and drive it, but it wasn’t there. I was just walking around Where’s the blooper reel?”
Of course, someone had to stay sober while the episode was filmed, and that responsibility rested on Marino and Enbom’s shoulders. “I spent a lot of time in my trailer while everyone else was running around at this park in Malibu and having a blast,” says the showrunner. “I’d show up and they’d be like, ‘We’re having a great time!'”
For his part, Marino calls the episode a “blur” but not because of any substances he ingested while directing. “We were going so fast and I was involved in every moment of it,” he recalls. As he stayed in his role — and kept a straight face — while watching the rest of the cast go insane, he states he channeled his inner Walter Sobchak. “When someone is playing an altered version of themselves, it’s fun to just sit and watch and react. You can react differently depending on what they give you.” That’s just his opinion, man.
party down Airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on Starz.
Source : www.yahoo.com